Braindump catches up on a week where the center does not hold.

[elfs]

Nerdy:

Roll a Powerful Media HTPC for Less Than $500. I've been planning on doing this as one of my two special-purpose computers for a while. This is a nice intro, although once again the Ars Technica HTPC Guide has a different, more powerful set of recommendations.

Effective Design for Multiple Screen Sizes.

Tutorials for Making Your Website Mobile Friendly

What Are The Top Three Things All Small Business Websites Need?

An Introduction to Backbone: Models and Collections. Backbone is awesome. There a part 2 for Views and Controllers, as well. (I quibble with the Backbone definition of "controller", though; it's more of the application router in the Rails or Django sense, not a controller the way it's used in MVC.)

Food and Exercise:

Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie. Again, the message here is: strength is longevity, 99% of fitness advice is BS, freeweights and form are everything.

Black-Bean and Tomato Quinoa

Puerto Rican Pernil: Pork Shoulder

Stir-Fried Chicken With Ketchup

Sex and Politics:

Sex-Positivity and Asexuality: Bringing Them Together. A fairly good article about how sex-positivity is about understanding and appeciating your sexuality, even if it's one where happiness is defined by a lack of actual sexual content.

Maggie Gallagher wants women to stop enjoying anal sex, saying sodomy is an "anti-feminist act". Maggie has just been thinking too much about anal recently, with her obsession with gays. When she rants about gays being "unnatural" and "unhealthy," it's buttsecks she's thinking about. Even I don't think that much about sodomy!

Canadian bishops want women to stop enjoying anal sex. As usual, the Catholic Church wants humanity to cut itself off from its own nature, saying "Only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love."

Congress moves to redefine rape. They want rape to require the use of a weapon or restraint in order to qualify as "rape". For all others-- for example, a minor who becomes pregnant from an adult relative-- any abortion procedure would have to be paid from a separate fund from all other health care funds her caretakers have, as almost any traditional fund comes with tax breaks the Right wants to deny in this case.

Comments

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

The article actually notes "As for the incest exception, the bill would only allow federally funded abortions if the woman is under 18." So your example isn't accurate. It's a pretty terrible bill, overall, but even Republicans don't think they can successfully stoop quite that low.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Congress moves to redefine rape: They want rape to require the use of a weapon or restraint in order to qualify as "rape"

Uh... so does that mean that bondage would be legally defined as rape also?

[gromm.livejournal.com]

HTPC for under $500:

It's called a PS3. It only does Everything(tm).

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Also, Lifehacker.com is tediously dull. I swear fully half of the articles go along the lines of "Hack* your iPod with this little bit of software you can download off the intarwebs!"

The only thing I saw there that even approached a do-it-yourself ethos was how to build a model airplane from bits of balsa wood and plans. Like the way they used to do in the 90s.

* "Hack" not necessarily meaning jailbreak, either. Just download and install. From itunes. Yawn.